The quiet Americans

Californian veterans Firestone Walker have three beers for us today. 

Has the brewery stopped numbering its Luponic Distortion series? By my reckoning this one, released last November, is No. 17 in the sequence, but it doesn't say that on the can. As always, they're cagey about telling us which hop varieties they've used in this IPA, one created to show the hops off. They claim lime, blueberry and pomelo are what the drinker will find in the taste. I didn't. Well, lime maybe, but there's a soft citrus as well: mandarin or kumquat. It's clean and clear with that, and although 5.9% ABV is easy drinking. Exciting it isn't, and it's definitely not as complex as the brewery makes out, but it's refreshing and tasty. Can't fault that.

Two IPAs with west coast sensibilities in a row? That's the Firestone Walker way. The second is Double Jack, a stonking 9.5%-er. Look at that colour! It's a bright, almost lurid, Lucozade amber in the glass. The head on top doesn't last long. Warming sticky malt is the centre of the flavour, though clean -- not full-on hot. If anything it's at risk of being plain. After the golden-syrup foretaste there's a mild zesty marmalade kick and some heavier resins, but nothing more complex than that. Even allowing for the four months that had passed since the beer was canned, there's not much going on here. It would work as a nightcap or a cold-day warmer, but isn't really something that will require your whole attention.

A Chocolate Cherry Stout for dessert, though a modest one at 5.5% ABV. Maybe it's them cherries, but it's quite red in the glass, topped with a rocky head of beige foam which left a pleasing lacing. There's a light touch on the pastry here, relatively speaking. The first impression on tasting is classical roasted dryness and no more chocolate than you'd get from a rounded and sweet, but ungimmicked, stout. It needs to warm a little for the cherry to emerge, and then it's only at the back, a wisp of Bakewell tart or throat lozenge. I liked its unfussy quality. Perhaps it's because so many other breweries add lactose and/or vanilla to beers like this, and although ingredients aren't listed I would bet neither features among them. Balance and understatement of this sort are both welcome and overdue in the pastry stout world.

Nothing world-beating in this lot, but some good drinking. I'll be keeping an eye out for Luponic Distortion 18, which should be heading this way soon.

Firestone Walk With Me

I'm slightly surprised there wasn't more of a fuss made about the arrival of Firestone Walker beer in Ireland a couple of months ago. By all accounts it was quite a coup by Grand Cru beers to get them over this way. But the first ones just quietly started showing up in specialist beer bars and off licences without anyone making too much noise, in my earshot anyway. I probably shouldn't complain. And with the company now part of a large multinational I expect they may start becoming more commonplace in Europe.

Anyway, three from the mid-Californian brewery today, though only two purchased on the white market, and only the one off the shelf of an Irish offy.

This can of Pivo, the brewery's pils, was acquired for me by Chris The Beer Geek, who took pains to ensure I got a fresh one, so the beer was a smidge over three weeks in the tin before I tipped it into a glass. The first surprise was the colour: a very nondescript pale yellow. At 5.3% ABV I thought it would at least look like a quality lager. Any fears over lack of substance are banished by the texture: the malt gives it a beautiful rounded and filling feel, plus that classic Dortmunder breadiness, shading towards the sweeter end of the spectrum with a hint of candyfloss. The promised hops are present but aren't at all overdone. There's the classic waxy, almost plasticky, noble hop bitterness then a mouthwatering cut-grass and pine effect, finishing quickly and cleanly, the way good lager should. I was expecting American hop perfume but that's not what it does at all: this is pure old-world elegance, reminding me a lot of the better, fresher, hoppier pale lagers I've caned in Bavaria. I'd happily see the whole "India Pale Lager" genre replaced with this sort of thing.

The Easy Jack IPA I obtained in DrinkStore so it wasn't quite so fresh, but still less than three months out of the brewery. It's another pale one: a crystalline golden hue. The aroma is rather candystore, all lurid chewsweet and sherbet fruit, plus the promise of plentiful sugar, which is surprising as it's only 4.7% ABV. The first pull reveals it to be pure Lilt, with a huge hit of juicy mango and pineapple. The sugar arrives after it and it's similar to the candyfloss in Pivo, much more than just a malt base. You need to wait around for any kind of bitterness but when it eventually arrives, right on the finish, even it is bringing fruit in tow: limes in particular, and maybe a slight spritz of grapefruit zest. At first I was really impressed by all that juiciness, but the sugary aspect makes each mouthful a little harder than the last. It's unusual to be saying a Californian IPA is unbalanced away from the bitterness side, but I think this is.

Finally, Wookey Jack, an 8.3% ABV rye black IPA I found on tap in BrewDog's Newcastle outlet recently. It's a dense beast, pure opaque black in colour and smelling worryingly of marker pens. The first thing to hit me on tasting was the texture: it's as viscous as it looks, thick and tarry with a slick, palate-coating bitterness but not much by way of hop flavour. Instead it's all roast, the only real hop presence being a certain dankness in the aroma. A disappointing experience, all told. Not what I'm after in a black IPA and completely lacking that dry grassy bite that hops and rye do so well together.

Double Jack has also been sighted on keg around Dublin. I wasn't a fan of this super-sticky double IPA when I first met it a couple of years ago, and recent revisits confirmed it's just not for me. I think perhaps they have too loose a hand at Firestone Walker when it comes to tipping the maltsack.

Broadening the horizons

I finished yesterday's post on a bit of a whine about BraufactuM and the whole overpriced corporate "gourmet" beer angle they seem to be pushing. I can't complain too much, though, as there were some very interesting imports on their stand next to their own stuff. For one thing they've acquired import rights to California's Firestone Walker. I took the opportunity to try Pale 31, the standard pale ale. I loved the flawless clear gold colour and the sharp citric aroma which immediately puts the palate on full alert. It's no hop bomb, however, being gently flavoured with hints of peaches and honeydew melon. One of those effortlessly delicious and drinkable beers. Double Jack is the brewery's double IPA and it's a mellow, warming one, again not overdoing things on the bitterness front, but not really on any other front either. A much better strong beer experience came from 14th Anniversary, an extremely boozy 12.5% ABV ale but one where all that heat doesn't matter, especially in a 100ml serve. Up front it wears a big smooth chocolate liqueur flavour: sinful and sumptuous.

A long-time stand-out on my list of must-drink beers is Baladin's Elixir and I was delighted to see it too was in BraufactuM's fridges. I requested a taster and, as no bottle was open already, my server popped a new one and the beer within exploded, foamily and messily, over the concrete floor of the Munich transport museum. Better there than at home or in a hotel room, I guess. Eventually, a sample was poured into a glass for me, at a 50% discount due to the inconvenience. And to be honest it wasn't the beer I'd been waiting for: hot smelling and rather characterless, like a first-attempt homebrewed dubbel. A surprising drop of the ball by the Piedmontese brewery there.

And speaking of hyped-up Italians, there was some Birrificio Italiano Tipopils knocking around and I secured a sip courtesy of Mark. It's quite nice, with a pleasant nettley bite, but to be honest I can't see what all the fuss is about. Maybe I need more than a mouthful to judge it properly.

While we're visiting the neighbours, a quick courtesy call on Austria whose brewers had banded together into a single large bar. Gusswerk were offering that German teenage classic the hemp beer, and theirs is called Synergy. While there's definitely some hempy pepperiness buried in it, it's mostly just a rather disappointing plain pils. At the other end of the bar Gusswerk were offering Horny Betty, a version of their Black Betty with added horny goat weed. I don't recall a style being named but it's dark brown and 9.2% ABV, tasting somewhere along the Belgian-style quadrupel to imperial stout spectrum: lots of dark fruit esters and lots of smooth chocolate too. Far from being a mere puerile novelty, the horny goat weed actually adds a pleasant herbal, medicinal character to the overall flavour.

On tasting Engelszell Gregorius back in February I mentioned I was looking forward to their next beer. Turns out I didn't have to wait too long because here it was: Benno, a tripel. Unfortunately it's not a great example of the style. Appropriately gold, it's missing the lovely fruit and honey and spice one would expect and is instead rather unpleasantly sharp. A shame.

Czech representation at BrauKunst Live! came in two flavours: the big bombastic glitz of Pilsner Urquell and on the other side of the hall, Honza Kočka, single-handedly flying the flag for his Nomád brand of ales. A question about how receptive the German market is to Czech IPA was shrugged off: Honza was mostly there to make contacts, drink beer and have fun. Sounds fair. Easy Rider was the Nomád beer everyone was talking about: a modest 4.8% ABV pale ale hopped with Chinook, Willamette and Cascade and bursting with fresh zingy citrus flavours on top of a fuller, weedier, hop funk. Above all it's sessionable, easy-going and sociable, hitting similar places as the Firestone Walker Pale 31. Its bigger brother is Karel, a 7.6% ABV IPA done entirely with Czech hop varieties. The end result is one of those warming, malt-driven IPAs very much echoing the English style for me. Very enjoyable but not for the hopheads. For them it has to be the novelty 13 Hops, brewed to 13° plato, so somewhere just north of 5% ABV, using wheat, caramalt and guess how many different kinds of hops. To be honest I could only taste nine or ten to begin with, but the citrus kick rises slowly on tasting, building to a sharp acidic finish from the full baker's dozen. It's a surprisingly clean beer, given everything that's gone into it.

We finish our visit to BrauKunst Live! tomorrow with some of the more traditional German beer styles.